Take off the Brexit glasses

All too many commentators, reporters, market watchers and politicians are seeing everything through Brexit spectacles. The pound went up and down before Brexit, the economy grew and slowed before the vote, the Stock market rose and fell without a referendum. All the forces which moved markets and changed economies before still apply.

It is absurd to argue that sterlig rallied owing to extra uncertainty created by the recent legal judgement. Far more important was the Banks decision to back off from further rate cuts and more QE, real things which have a direct bearing on the value of the currency. It also helped that the Bank now sees that the economy will grow strongly this year, and will do better next year than it thought.

The recent fall in the Stock market has been put down to the possibility of a Trump win in the US election. Its the first time for months that a non Brexit reason has been given for a major change, Lets hope its a sign of better things to come in trying to explain why markets move.

Meanwhile as a few commentators have also noted, money growth continues at a rapid pace in the UK. This points to further strong growth next year, not to the EUro area style lower growth rate the Bank and others are now predicting.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

25 Comments

Yes and the worst offenders are hard line Brexiteers, desperate to follow their wishful thinking rather than the evidence.

When will politicians, especially MP’s, realise that spin-doctoring is almost impossible these days, unlike before, the internet means that even an ‘average Joe’ can search out and go to the source, for example the real time FX trading graph the other day and see exactly when that trading spike happened. Spin is dead.

@Edward2; Oh do stop bleating Eddie, you asked for information already provided and now get up set when your true motives are pointed out. After all it’s not as if others have not made very similar comments to my own, yet you have not asked them to provide evidence to back up their claims is it (if you have your comments have not been published!)…

You just pointed to an FX trading graph which you have had a look at and then you tell us all movements in the market are due to the vote to leave the EU.
You refuse to accept the correct post by Mr Redwood and you dive in with your full bias showing.
In effect proving what the post says.

– and even if it fools people in the short-term to medium-term, the truth always comes out in the end. We’ve seen this spectacularly so with Tony Blair whose political reputation is now dirt (having started off as gold). And so the outcome of Brexit in the end (after a few or many years) will be what most people really want – and that is as little immigration, and as much economic prosperity, as possible. Sovereignty of Parliament and the Judiciary just isn’t on most people’s radars. What most people care about is immigration but above all the economy (even immigration is ultimately about the economy, and how many Brexit voters saw immigrants taking their jobs and/or affecting their standard of living – and without these voters, Brexit would never have one – wouldn’t have come close).

You are right. Remainers need to take off the Brexit glasses.
However, EQUALLY, Brexiteers need to take off the blaming-the-EU-for-everything glasses!
We need a balanced, objective approach in order for things to work out best in the end.
Regards

Let us get the markets to move by having May (and Hammond in his Autumn statement) do some sensible things for a change. Undo almost everything the economic illiterate IHT ratter Osborne did for a start his Landlord and the Tenant mugging, his destruction of private pensions, his central wage controls, his scrapping of family allowance and personally allowances for many, his increases in IPT, his misguided non dom taxes …..

Simpler lower taxes, cheaper more reliable energy, smaller more efficient government, fracking, cancellation of white elephants vanity projects and green crap subsidies, cancellation of yet more red tape such as workers on boards and gender pay reporting, undoing the insane Uber ruling, relaxing planning rules & OTT building controls and getting more houses built and businesses more competitive ….. Just get the state out of the way and we will do fine.

The best way to help our dire NHS quickly is to encourage those who can to go privately give tax relief to people buying insurance and cut Osborne’s 10% IPT tax. Why should people who want to pay for their treatment have to pay three times? Once for the NHS they are not using, then the tax on the money they earn to pay for the insurance and then a further 10% on top thanks to Osborne. You just end up with a dire virtual monopoly, rationing, incompetence and loads of avoidable deaths every month.

Pundits pontificate and their conclusions tend to be about what they wish it to be rather than what it is. Most of the time the real reason of an event is unknown or obscure enough that any interpretation can be made and not be satisfactorily challenged. That is what remainers are doing and the others are just doing it to give the impression that they are wise and are worthy of our attention(self importance).

In any event it is only a guess. If that guess appears reasonable we generally go along with it never knowing if it was correct. If we viewed all prognostications as suspect instead of agreeing or not along partisan lines we may actually stop the harmful consequences that arise from acting upon them. Carney with his act of restarting QE and reducing the interest rate is one prime example. It only fuels uncertainty. If he had instead said that he need do nothing that would have been just as confidence building without the burdens yet to come from what he has actually done.

.. and then they can see the increase in the value of the £ at 10:00am GMT as the legal reading was announced.

Its clear from the £:$ immediately after the referendum (dropping from 1:49 to 1:30) and then the Conservative Conference (dropping from 1:30 to 1:23) that it is political events that now dominate the £ valuation. Its is more absurd to remain in denial.

Reply IT is true the pound rose both at the time of the legal announcement and at the time of the Bank of England announcement. It is my view that the issue which mattered and made the difference was the QE announcement. How does more uncertainty re Brexit help the pound?

Reply to reply. I think the announcement was made at that time with the purpose of letting people thinking it was down to Brexit being made harder. Carney could have announced this the day before and then we would have seen the same results but for different reasons – the right ones. Very clever move by him and obviously worked as we can see by the arguments on this site.

You are right.A struggle against the supranational dictatorship that hides its true nature behind out-of-date or benign-sounding but deceitful titles such as the “West”,the “free world” and the “international community”

The BBC has two phrases.
When something is going well, the news is preceded by “In spite of Brexit”.
If its not so good, they then use “Following Brexit”.
I’m surprised it hasn’t extended to the sports news, “In spite of Brexit, Andy Murray becomes No 1”!
Oh for some genuinely impartial news on Brexit and world events.

The markets merely need a reason for pushing prices up or down – it is what they do. Stable markets produce no profits.
Brexit was the excuse, not the reason, for the move in the pound and the rise of the Stock Markets. Now that one is wearing thin, they are looking for another one – the US election. When the gamblers push the prices down, the small people panic and get out of the market and the big boys clean up at rock bottom prices and then push prices up again. When they have gone far enough, they take their profits by selling and down they go again. It is a never ending cycle, all designed to relieve the relatively poor public of their money and transfer it to the super rich.
They used to say that the Forex market was so big it could not be controlled. You don’t hear that one anymore.

It is impossible to know with real certainty why financial markets move as the players are anonymous and do not reveal their hands or reasoning. That is, unless you are the BBC. I have lost count of the number of times the BBC has told us that any fall in sterling is the result of Brexit. They don’t know that. No one knows that. Not even Mark Carney.

As to your blog tomorrow re the Miller case, it would be interesting to know more about the briefing note referred to by the judges (paras 106 and 107) which told parliamentarians the referendum would only be advisory, when the Bill itself did not say it would be either advisory or binding. Who writes these notes, who signs off on them and why are they not made public?

Reply They are written by officials and are no part of the law. Whereas official statements by Ministers in the debate on the Bill are part of interpreting the law, and Ministers assured us the people would decide.

Re The Miller Case, my understanding is the Judges took the view that Miller could stand to lose her rights as granted by Parliament if at the end of the 2 years post Art50 the Govt does not reach agreement with EU, therefore it is Parliament that must decide and take responsibility for triggering Art50. However surely the judges should have balanced the conflicting issues- they seem to have given little weight to the referendum result. What are these particular rights that Miller is concerned she might lose? This smacks of some instances when judgments uphold “Human Rights” contrary to what might be called common sense.

It is commonplace these days for many to believe there is a default value to everything, a value that a thing ‘should’ have – exchange rates, house prices, jobs, climate conditions, the number of elephants, etc. And that the default must be the current observed value.

Any change from this faux-norm and there is a collective panic attack.

I suppose it is a lack of any history and an education system that spoon-feeds children only what the State says they need to know, thinking not required, and does not teach children to carry out due diligence, critical analysis and deploy reason.

And as everyone knows the history of the World, even Time itself, started in 1992 with the Maastrict Treaty which created the Universe as we know it aka the EU and there is no land beyond the EU – There be dragons.

So many things in this country are currently absurd. I’d suggest the Government give the BBC a hard talking too – we need balanced information and coverage of news: not the shenanigans they serve up. If the Government don’t want to act, then revoke the licence fee, and let ‘the people’ do it.

It is disgraceful that I have to listen to a line up of anti-democratic nobodies, telling us that the majority of people in this country and ignorant and don’t know what we voted for. Sounds like they’d rather repeal the 1932 Reform Act, than the 1972 EC Act !!

The amount of anti-Brexit rhetoric in the British media is ridiculous we now have ‘everyman and his dog’, running alongside the so-called paid experts conveniently churning negative new articles, interviews, and some high profile public figures who want to stay relevant, nearly every reaction of late has been proven as false.

As soon as US presidential elections is over, it will be back to ‘business as usual’ bad journalism comparing major change and business failings to Brexit. But it needs to be nip in the bud, more people like yourself to weigh in, call-out and diffuse the noise otherwise people will continue to believe what they want to hear whilst Brexit is stuck the middle of a media circus with multiple ringmasters and clowns throwing loose canon balls, acting immaturely and refusing to move on, they enjoy using “Brexit as the sole excuse for everything that can go wrong”

I see it differently, EU is the modern day … Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, Couldn’t put Humpty together again …
___

Since Brexit will change the ‘financial services industry’, I think this blueprint covers all the basis on the possible options for access
EU – Expanded Equivalence model,
UK – Financial Centre model preferred,
What are your thoughts on Post-Brexit options for UK financial services”.

About John Redwood

John Redwood won a free place at Kent College, Canterbury, He graduated from Magdalen College Oxford, has a DPhil and is a fellow of All Souls College. A businessman by background, he has been a director of NM Rothschild merchant bank and chairman of a quoted industrial PLC.